The Virtual Time Travel Platform : engineering a generic framework for immersive cultural heritage scenes

Abstract

This thesis presents the Virtual Time Travel Platform (VTTP), a flexible platform for creating, sharing and deploying interactive cultural heritage content across a diverse range of contexts. The interactive scenes created using the VTTP enable experiential learning on cultural heritage topics. The VTTP supports the creation of scenes using freely available tools. These scenes can then be deployed into museums, schools and across the Internet through a process of reconfiguration rather than redevelopment. The VTTP enables high tech, immersive exhibits to be produced with a budget and a flexibility that is suitable for co-creation with community museums as opposed to national institutions. To date the VTTP has been used to deploy three heterogenous museum exhibits across Scotland which have been visited by more than 10,000 visitors in the 18 months since the first one went live. This thesis presents an evaluation of the success of these exhibits at engaging the public with the topics they present.

The VTTP was created by augmenting existing Open Virtual World (OVW) software (OpenSim) to support installation into museums. The component which adds this functionality is a bespoke application called Chimera. Chimera supports immersive displays, Natural User Input (NUI) control and the embedding of experiential exploration as part of a larger context suitable for museums. The extension of OVW technology to enable museum deployment is the major contribution of this work.

To support the museum deployments a quantitative analysis of the VTTP Viewer component is presented. This evaluates the impact of Viewer quality of service onuser quality of experience and suggests heuristics for optimising VTTP deployments.